Very Nervous!!

[adams3868]

Thanks to all for help on the shoe issue. Yesterday I got the "call" for my first assignment and holycr@#! I can't believe how nervous I am and it about two weeks away. I am talking about serious butterflies in the gut but eager also. Any advice from you all or stories of your "first" time would be helpful.

[DeputyUICHousto]

you're working a two man and paired with a verteran. If you are that should help. Although my first partner wasn't much help. He stood down the line behind first base eating a hot dog. What you're going to find is that the game is going to move much faster than you thought. Use your mechanics and get in the best possible place to make your calls. And above all else...HUSTLE!

Don't get down on yourself when you make a mistake. Use it as a learning opportunity. When things happen during the game that you're unsure of try to remember them and then after you're done go back to the rule book and look them up. Also, do not allow the teams to make you second guess yourself or to cause you to feel like you shouldn't umpire. You are going to make mistakes...hell, I still do after 23 years. Learn from them.

Hope this helps.

[NCASAUmp]

Well, she was a special girl... We'd been with each other a long time, and...

OH! Not that first time.

Relax out there. Take things one step at a time and don't feel like you have to "rush" things to make it look like you've been doing this for years.

Slow down, read the play, think about it, think about it some more, make the call.

You'll do just fine out there.

[RadioBlue]

I still get butterfiles from time-to-time. That's right, after doing this for 25+ years, I admit there's times I still get butterflies!

NCASA has it exactly right: slow down!!! It's a marathon, not a sprint. And it ain't nothin' 'till you call it! Once you think you've slowed down on your timing enough, then slow down a bit more.

Most of all: have fun!!!!

[NCASAUmp]

One little trick I use to keep myself from rushing the call is to assume that the defense WILL drop the ball, and that it's up to them to prove to me that they did NOT drop the ball.

If I'm expecting a dropped ball, it forces me to slow down.

[BretMan]

The first game I ever umpired was an 8U coach-pitch baseball game. I don't remember being especially nervous, probably because I had played and coached for over twenty five years so being on a field wasn't that big of a deal. But I'm sure I was a little bit nervous.

A couple of things I remember like it was yesterday...

There was one routine play at first base where I came out from behind the plate to make the call (working solo). Instead of just getting a good position and angle on the play, I ran full speed up the line, beat the batter to first by a mile and, while standing right next to the kid, gave my biggest loudest, punching the air, sell it hard "OUT!" call. The kid was so startled that he about jumped out of his shoes and started to cry! Right out of the box...I made an eight year old cry in my first game!

On another play, a runner was advancing to third base. Instead of stopping on the bag, he ran straight across it toward the coach's box. The coach grabbed him, spun him around and pushed him back toward third. The defense had thrown the ball to third by then and tried to put a tag on the runner as he jabbed his foot at the base. I called the runner out for being assisted by a coach. Kind of odd that I'd have to make that call in my first game! The next time I had to call that was several years and several hundred games later.

My wife had come to watch this game and was sitting at the edge of the parking lot along the first base side of the field. On the way home, she asks me why I called the kid out on this play. Then she says something like, "It looked to me like he beat the tag". So, in my very first game, I get grief about a call from my own wife who was sitting a couple of hundred feet away from the play!

[Skahtboi]

Originally Posted by DeputyUICHousto

you're working a two man and paired with a verteran. If you are that should help. Although my first partner wasn't much help. He stood down the line behind first base eating a hot dog. What you're going to find is that the game is going to move much faster than you thought. Use your mechanics and get in the best possible place to make your calls. And above all else...HUSTLE!

Don't get down on yourself when you make a mistake. Use it as a learning opportunity. When things happen during the game that you're unsure of try to remember them and then after you're done go back to the rule book and look them up. Also, do not allow the teams to make you second guess yourself or to cause you to feel like you shouldn't umpire. You are going to make mistakes...hell, I still do after 23 years. Learn from them.

Hope this helps.

Did we have the same partner for our first games????